


breach of contract

by jdphoenix



Series: contracts [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Episode: s01e14 T.A.H.I.T.I.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24153574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: This conversation is seven months overdue.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons/Grant Ward
Series: contracts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758928
Comments: 6
Kudos: 74





	breach of contract

Jemma wakes up tired, the way she often is after falling asleep in the lab mid-project. But she’s not slumped over her lab bench, her cheek pressed awkwardly into a three-ring binder. Her head is cradled in a familiar lap, the smell of him telling her she’s safe and secure before she even opens her eyes. When she does, she’s doubly reassured; she’s on the couch in the Bus’s lounge, the safest place in the world.

The disconnect there—between this place and a man who’s never set foot in it—begins a chain reaction in her brain so that almost as soon as she’s had the initial thought she’s ten steps ahead and remembering-

_Skye!_

“It’s all right.” Grant stops his gentle petting of her hair to rest his hand reassuringly, heavily on her shoulder. “Skye’s fine. Trip’s keeping an eye on her and he promised he’d press the alert if she so much as rolled over.”

“She was _shot_ , she shouldn’t be rolling anywhere.” Jemma does though, onto her back so that she can look at Grant. Robbed of his opportunities to stroke her hair, his hand finds hers on her stomach. “Hello,” she says.

It’s an overdue greeting. Between the flight to the Guest House, the mission there, and what she presumes—from the dull ache behind her eyes—to have been a dendrotoxin round that knocked her out, he must have been on the Bus for nearly twenty-four hours. In all that time neither of them has exchanged a single word that wasn’t critical to the mission at hand.

He smiles, soft and warm, so much like the young agent she fell in love with so long ago. “Hey.”

All at once it’s too much. The train. Skye.

Her _husband_.

She covers her face with her hands as the tears start to flow and Grant, always ready where there’s a damsel to be saved, springs into action. He drags her up and into his lap, shushes her and tells her the lovely lie that it’s all going to be all right, and most important of all he holds her in his strong arms.

Whenever he used to come home from a particularly rough mission—not that she knew the particulars, as his clearance was far above hers, but his stoicism made it clear when he was especially affected—he would tell her that the best thing she could do for him was simply to be there. To be the one constant in his life: a warm smile, a pair of arms, a body to wrap himself up in. Though she was happy to do it and glad she could help at all, she always privately felt it was a somewhat empty duty, one that could be performed by anyone at all.

She knows now she was wrong.

After she’s cried herself out, she remains in his lap, her head resting on his shoulder. His hand rests on her hip, his arm stretched across her back to provide support, but his free hand has found hers again. His thumb strokes the jewels of her wedding ring, diamonds and sapphires he insisted on buying her despite her objections.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“No-”

She closes her fingers around his, stilling him. He’s here. He’s here and Skye is being looked after and this is already seven months overdue, she won’t have him stopping her. “No, I am. You were only trying to protect me and I should have respected that rather than treating you as some- some strawman misogynist. It wasn’t about my capabilities as a woman and I shouldn’t have made it about that.”

He was never happy with her increasing desire to enter the field, but she convinced herself it was petty selfishness that would pass. When it didn’t, she let her anger fester, convincing herself that Grant simply didn’t have faith in her. He was a big strong man capable of working in the field and facing life or death situations, while she was a weak little woman who couldn’t even pass her field assessment without his coaching. She knew it wasn’t true—why would he help her despite his protests if he didn’t think her capable of pulling it off—but she built it up and built it up into this ridiculous 1950s caricature of their marriage. And it still might have all been hashed out reasonably if only they’d had more time to talk after he returned from Paris.

“You’re right,” he says while his fingers gently massage her hip. “But then you always are.”

She leans a little more heavily into his chest, pleased by the praise even if, in this particular case, it’s at her own expense.

“And that’s why I need to apologize too,” he goes on. “You were right that I didn’t want you to go and I should’ve been more clear about my reasons from the start instead of waiting until you were literally packed and leaving to get into it.”

She doesn’t want to fight again—not about this and not _ever—_ but after the last few days…

She needs to know.

She pushes herself away from the warmth of his embrace so she can look up into his face. “What were your reasons?”

“It doesn’t matter-”

“No. I want to know. Tell me. And I promise I- Well, I might get cross. But I give you permission to tell me I’m breaking my word if I overreact. I only want to know.”

He raises an eyebrow at her promise. And it … hurts, if she’s honest.

They’ve always been terribly mature about fights. It’s a byproduct of the constraints his job puts on their time together. Neither of them want to waste what little they get with arguing. So they have rules and boundaries neither is allowed to cross, all laid out in an actual contract they’ve both signed. This last fight and the subsequent seven months of silence mark the first time they’ve gone to bed without at least working out a functioning truce.

“Okay,” he says slowly. “I guess my first reason was that I’m a selfish bastard.”

“Grant.”

“I don’t like not knowing where you are, that you’re safe. It helps me-” He drops his head, giving himself a minute to simply breathe. The angle allows her to see he’s grown a gray hair or two since last she saw him. Her throat tightens. “It helps me do what I need to do when I know that no matter what you’re gonna be okay.”

She touches his face and he leans into it, his eyes falling shut once more. She doesn’t know if it would have made any difference seven months ago, but today, when she’s seen just a fraction of what SHIELD demands of its field agents, she is truly sorry she took that comfort from him.

“What else?” she presses gently.

He sighs shakily. “I guess that also kinda covers that I’m afraid to lose you so…” He meets her eyes. “I know some of what you’ve been through.”

She doesn’t ask how. Whether it’s from rumors in SHIELD’s grapevine or that she’s sharing this team with two of their oldest friends who would both be only too happy to spy on her for him, it doesn’t really make much difference.

“And despite that, you still haven’t seen much. This life is rough and it demands a lot from you. Things I’m not sure you can handle.”

She can’t help the stiffening of her spine and, given their positions, Grant obviously can’t help noticing it. Still, she forces her tone to remain even when she asks, “You don’t think I’m capable?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” she asks, and perhaps she says it somewhat archly but his dismissive attitude invited it.

“You’re assuming the worst of me. I said I don’t think you can handle it, not that I don’t think you can _do_ it.”

That- She snaps her mouth shut around her half-formed retort. That makes no sense at all.

“You’re a good person, Jem. You’re kind and caring and maybe you’re too smart to be naive, but you’re _innocent_. You know the kind of crap that’s out there in the world, you know there are real monsters, but you’ve never had to face them or the choices that facing them requires you to make.” He brushes his fingers through her hair in a gesture quite obviously meant to be soothing. She chooses to allow it and to allow him to pull her closer to rest against him once more. “When you make those choices, it changes who you are as a person. And I don’t say this to insult you, but you hide from things you don’t want to deal with. That’s not always a bad thing but in this case I’m afraid you’re gonna hide so deep you’ll get lost and someone else will be left where you were. Someone cold and hard.”

Someone like May, she thinks. Coulson told them May used to be happier, warmer, but a mission changed her. Jemma finds the possibility of such a transformation in her own life suddenly all too real.

“You’re good,” she says. Then, because she’s afraid she said it too softly for him to hear, more loudly. “You’re still good.”

He chuckles the way he always does when she says things like that. “Not always. And besides, you didn’t know me before. Hell, I didn’t even know me before. I was just a kid when…”

When his parents and brother broke him. She digs her arm around his back to squeeze him tightly.

“You satisfied?” he asks.

“No. But your reasons are understandable. I should have listened to them before.”

“I should’ve told them to you instead of ordering you to stay like some cadet.”

“Well, yes, you definitely shouldn’t have tried to do that. But I meant that my team still needs me. We need to find this Clairvoyant character and put a stop to his operation. And then of course there’s Skye…”

“Wait.” Grant shifts his shoulder, forcing her to move back again so he can look at her. “Are you saying that once this is over and the Clairvoyant’s caught…?”

“And Skye’s recovered,” she adds, nodding firmly. “Yes, then I’ll return to a safe, boring, no-wheels-or-wings lab.”

“Jemma, you don’t have to-”

She laughs. “Are you seriously still arguing when you’ve _won_?”

He rolls his eyes. “I don’t _want_ to, but I also don’t want you doing something you’re gonna regret.”

“I won’t.” She rests a hand on his chest. “I’ve had my adventure. More than my fair share of them. I should have given it up ages ago; to be honest, I’m not sure why I didn’t after-” She cuts off, not sure whether Grant’s clearance covers things like Chitauri viruses or she should tell him at all.

“After what?”

Well, it’s not like there’s any stopping him finding out now. He’ll pester her and the rest of the team and, if that amounts to nothing, bribe a comms agent to get him files on all the Bus’s activities. Better she control the flow of information.

“I, well, I might have, slightly … _fallenoutoftheBus_. But Trip caught me! And as you can see I’m right as rain. Not even a scratch.”

To her surprise, Grant only sinks more deeply into the couch cushions. “Oh. That.”

“You knew?”

Hurt wraps sharply around her ribs. She’d assumed, when he didn’t appear in Morocco or at the Sandbox to physically stop her from returning to the field, that he simply hadn’t heard. SHIELD wouldn’t be too keen on one of their specialists going AWOL to see to his perfectly healthy wife; it made sense they wouldn’t tell him what had occurred. That he did know and never so much as _called_ hurts more than she cares to admit. Was he really that cross with her decision to accept the assignment to Coulson’s team?

“Yeah, I- kinda got sedated.”

“You _what_?” she shrieks. She can’t help it. What could he possibly have done to warrant _that_?

He winces. “Did you guys hear about some cult activity in Norway about the same time you were dealing with your firefighters? Well, they had some ancient Asgardian artifact that was giving people super strength. Since we didn’t have an Avenger on hand to stop them, I figured the next best thing would be to fight fire with fire.”

“You didn’t.” She would have thought poorly of a decision to use the artifact before her experiences with the Chitauri helmet, but now? She’s horrified.

“I did.” He has the good grace to look sheepish. “Turns out, the artifact _also_ amps up your aggression. Every little annoyance, every old trauma, it all comes back about a hundred times worse. Luckily I spent most of it working through the cult members and had a pretty good handle on things by the time we were finished. _Un_ luckily the STRIKE team’s comms agent didn’t know about that feature of the artifact’s influence, so he didn’t think there was any reason not to tell me my wife was currently halfway across the Atlantic and dying of an incurable alien virus.”

“Oh, Grant.”

“Thank you, by the way, for perfecting that little gun you and Fitz were working on. If we hadn’t had them, the guys probably would’ve had to shoot me for real.”

The thought of that and the accompanying fear—what if the team’s first mission hadn’t required them to perfect the night-night gun? what if she and Fitz had been so distracted by their new assignment the project fell entirely by the wayside?—has her burying her face in his chest.

“By the time I woke up, we’d received word you were fine and I’d calmed down enough to realize I couldn’t be anywhere near you right then.”

He strokes his hand up and down her back. For a time they hold one another, glad simply to know the other is alive.

“You’re really gonna quit?” he asks eventually.

She’s dimly aware of her old anger with him, but it seems inconsequential now. “Yes. I am.”

Fitz will be annoyed—she was the one dragging him into the field in the first place—but he might decide to stay; she’s seen how he looks at Skye and after her brush with death, he just might find the courage to make his move. And Coulson will be disappointed, but she thinks he’ll understand and she’ll be sure to vet her replacement herself to ensure the team has the best.

“Where do you wanna go after? I can ask John to pull some strings.”

She hasn’t had much time to think about it and, even if she had, she would have assumed she’d be given a rather unenviable assignment for forcing SHIELD’s bureaucrats to do the logistical shuffling they’re known for. It hadn’t occurred to her she could utilize her husband’s close relationship with a high ranking agent to make the most of this opportunity.

“I’m not sure. I can tell him my preference before the two of you leave though.”

He laughs at her.

“What?”

“John’s long gone, sweetheart. He left hours ago.”

“He left? But- you’re-?” He’s _here_. His assignment is to work under John as a two-man (or more, if the mission calls for it) STRIKE team.

“The official story is that I injured my ankle on the way out of that bunker and couldn’t make it up the ladder into the quinjet. He had to go on without me. Not a big deal; it’s escorting one, completely untrained prisoner. John can handle it.”

Of course John can handle it. He’s a seasoned agent and, after several hours in the Cage with only the team to care for him, Quinn wasn’t in any shape to be escaping. But that doesn’t make Grant’s story any less absurd.

“You once walked a mile on a broken leg,” she reminds him.

He shrugs. “I had a good reason. And more supportive boots.”

He is ridiculous. And romantic; that good reason was their wedding.

She nuzzles closer to him. “So you’re all mine?”

“Technically I’m Coulson’s until we touch down at a base. But he ordered me to take care of you and stop you exhausting yourself with Skye so…”

“In that case-” she twists in place so that her knees rest on either side of his lap- “if the Cage is empty, I believe we’re seven months overdue for our contractually obligated make-up sex.”

Grant sighs longsufferingly even as he hooks his hands beneath her thighs and stands. “Duty calls.”


End file.
